What Is a Superfood? The Meaning, the Marketing and the Evidence

Where Did the Word “Superfood” Come From?

The word started in advertising. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Nutrition Source dates its earliest known use to the early 20th century, around World War I, when the United Fruit Company ran an advertising campaign for its imported bananas.

According to the same page, the banana’s healthy image grew after doctors published reports on banana diets for celiac disease and diabetes. The banana cure for celiac disease didn’t last; the condition was later traced to gluten. We could not locate a primary company document that uses the word “superfood” itself, so treat the exact origin story as the account most often repeated, not a settled fact.

The pattern held. A food gets the label when a seller, a publisher or a headline gives it one. No committee awards it, and a null study doesn’t take it away.

Is “Superfood” a Regulated Term?

In the European Union, partly. In the United States, no.

European Union: Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 governs nutrition and health claims on foods. Article 10(3) says that “reference to general, non-specific benefits of the nutrient or food for overall good health or health-related well-being may only be made if accompanied by a specific health claim” from the authorised lists in Articles 13 or 14.

The regulation does not name “superfood”, but UK government guidance on the same regulation gives “superfood” and “healthy” as examples of these general claims (GOV.UK). So a pack of goji berries sold in the EU can say “superfood” only if an authorised claim, such as one about a vitamin the product contains in sufficient amounts, sits next to it.

The rule covers food labels and advertising. People often call it a “superfood ban”, which overstates it, since the word is allowed when paired with an authorised claim.

United States: The FDA has not defined “superfood”. The term it does define is “healthy”, updated in a final rule announced in December 2024.

To carry that claim, a food must contain a minimum amount from a food group recommended by the Dietary Guidelines and stay under limits for added sugars, saturated fat and sodium. Fruits and vegetables with nothing added except water qualify automatically, whether fresh, frozen or canned (FDA).

A plain bag of frozen spinach therefore meets the US definition of “healthy” with no further testing. Under US rules, calling a food a superfood requires nothing at all.

What Makes a Food Nutrient-Dense?

A nutrient-dense food delivers a lot of vitamins, minerals, fiber or protein for relatively few calories. Nutrient density, unlike the label, can actually be measured.

Nutrition scientist Adam Drewnowski pointed out in a 2005 review that the idea of a “nutritious food” had no consistent standard, and that healthy foods were often defined by what they lacked (fat, sugar, salt) rather than by what they supplied (Drewnowski, 2005, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition). He proposed scoring foods by their percentage of daily values per 2,000 kcal.

That work led to the Nutrient Rich Foods index. Its best-performing version, NRF9.3, scores a food on nine nutrients to encourage and three to limit, and its rankings tracked overall diet quality in US national survey data (Fulgoni et al., 2009, Journal of Nutrition). Scores like this tend to rank leafy greens, legumes, fish and many vegetables highly. Exotic foods get no bonus for being exotic.

Antioxidant scores are a separate trap. For years, marketers quoted ORAC values, a lab measure of antioxidant capacity, as proof a food was “super”. In 2012 the USDA withdrew its ORAC database, saying the values had no proven relevance to health in people and were routinely misused to promote products (NutraIngredients, 2012). A high test-tube number says little about what happens once the food is eaten.

Do Superfoods Do Anything Special for Your Body?

Not in the way the label suggests. The foods usually called superfoods are nourishing, and eating more of them is linked with better health. Most of that research, though, looks at food groups and whole diets. Single ingredients get far less study.

How We Grade the Evidence for a Food

We grade each health claim in our encyclopedia on a six-tier scale, published in full on our editorial standards page. The grade is set by the kind of research behind the claim for that particular food, so one food can carry a Strong grade for one claim and an Insufficient grade for another.

Acai, one of the most heavily marketed superfoods, has no claim graded above Limited. Preliminary grades for kale and sardines do not mean those foods are poor choices; they mean nobody has run outcome trials on that specific food.

Which Foods Are Commonly Called Superfoods?

There is no official list. A 2023 study looked at 45 English-language websites that came up when searching “superfoods” and found 136 different foods given the label. Ten appeared on at least 15 of the sites (Cobos and Díaz, 2023, Foods):

1. Kale
2. Spinach
3. Salmon
4. Blueberries
5. Avocado
6. Chia seeds
7. Walnuts
8. Beans
9. Fermented milks, such as yogurt and kefir
10. Garlic

The authors judged the websites’ information generally accurate but oversimplified, enough to raise false expectations about health benefits. Most of the ten are sold in any supermarket. For every food we cover, with its evidence grades, browse our full superfoods list.

Are Superfoods Worth the Price?

Sometimes. The price rarely tracks the evidence, though. Many of the foods with the most consistent research behind them are among the cheapest in the store, and their nutrient profiles overlap with pricier imports.

Oats: Oats carry the only Strong-graded heart claim in this article, backed by an FDA-authorized health claim for beta-glucan.

Beans and lentils: Beans and lentils supply fiber, protein and folate. Our entries grade lentils’ role in folate status and in LDL lowering as Moderate.

Cabbage: Cabbage belongs to the same cruciferous family as kale and broccoli. 100 g of raw green cabbage provides about 41% of the daily value for vitamin C and 63% for vitamin K.

Frozen berries: Frozen produce holds its vitamins well. In a University of California, Davis study of eight fruits and vegetables, including blueberries and strawberries, vitamin content in frozen samples was comparable to, and sometimes higher than, fresh (Bouzari et al., 2015, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry). Frozen blueberries also kept their anthocyanins over three months of storage in an earlier study.

Canned sardines: Sardines canned with their bones provide about 1 g of EPA and DHA, 382 mg of calcium and 8.9 mcg of vitamin B12 per 100 g, with very low mercury.

An imported berry powder buys a different flavour and some convenience. It doesn’t buy better evidence. For a heart-focused version of this comparison, see our guide to heart health superfoods.

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